THE MOVEMENTS AND HABITS OF PLANTS. 15 



quently that no injury, on the contrary, good, resulted 

 from half of them, or the males, failing to produce off- 

 spring. 



COMPARATIVE FERTILITY OF MALE AXD FEMALE 

 PLANTS. 



The Differ- Thirteen bushes (of the spindle-tree) grow- 



ent Forms of • ,-, • ■, j - . j . 



Flowers, m o near one another in a hedge consisted of 

 page 290. eight females quite destitute of pollen, and 

 of five hermaphrodites with well-developed anthers. In 

 the autumn the eight females were well covered with 

 fruit, excepting one which bore only a moderate number. 

 Of the five hermaphrodites, one bore a dozen or two 

 fruits, and the remaining four bushes several dozen ; 

 but their number was as nothing compared with those 

 on the female bushes, for a single branch, between two 

 and three feet in length, from one of the latter, yielded 

 more than any one of the hermaphrodite bushes. The 

 difference in the amount of fruit produced by the two 

 sets of bushes is all the more striking, as from the 

 sketches above given it is obvious that the stigmas of the 

 polleniferous flowers can hardly fail to receive their own 

 pollen ; while the fertilization of the female flowers de- 

 pends on pollen being brought to them by flies and the 

 smaller Hymenoptera, which are far from being such effi- 

 cient carriers as bees. 



I now determined to observe more carefully during 

 successive seasons some bushes growing in another place 

 about a mile distant. As the female bushes were so 

 highly productive, I marked only two of them with the 

 letters A and B, and five polleniferous bushes with the 

 letters C to G. I may premise that the year 1865 was 

 highly favorable for the fruiting of all the bushes, espe- 

 cially for the polleniferous ones, some of which were 



